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In East Boston, a geothermal greenhouse and community-driven nonprofit are reshaping how this part of the city grows, eats, and connects.
Drive into East Boston from downtown — through the Callahan Tunnel and into a dense neighborhood of narrow streets and tightly packed homes — and you might miss it at first. But look closely: tucked underneath billboards and in between row houses is a sleek, glass-walled greenhouse filled with seedlings and tropical plants. It’s a warm, green refuge on even the coldest New England days, and more than that, it’s a space for gathering, learning, and community connection. It’s also the region’s first greenhouse powered by geothermal energy.
This is one of several hubs run by Eastie Farm, a nonprofit rooted in this immigrant-rich neighborhood since 2015. It all started when a group of East Boston neighbors noticed an empty, overgrown lot at 294 Sumner Street and proposed transforming it to a community farm so that it wouldn’t be turned into another development. From the beginning, Eastie Farm has followed a simple ethic: care for the land, and care for the people who live on it.
“A space for larger solutions while we tend for the needs of today,” is how Kannan Thiruvengadam, Eastie Farm’s executive director and one of its founding members, describes the mission.
That original 5,000-square-foot lot on Sumner Street now grows annual crops like corn, squash, beans, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and peppers, as well as fruit trees and “lots of perennials,” Kannan says. But maximizing crop yield has never been the goal.
“It’s not so much that we want to maximize every square inch of farming,” he explains. “We’re not into that — it’s not even a good idea in an urban space. We serve more as a conduit: a connection for people with people. Where growing food is the vehicle for our connection and communication.”
Being in a city also allows Eastie Farm to bridge urban communities with rural growers. The nonprofit partners with about 50 regional farmers, buying their produce in the form of CSA (community-supported agriculture) shares to redistribute in East Boston — often at discounted or free rates.
This is not only a growing space, it’s meant to grow community.
– Joel Seidner, food and farming program manager, Eastie Farm
“And when you come to pick up, nobody knows which of those components you opted into, which eliminates stigma,” Kannan says. “Food security is very much part of the mission.”
Still, he emphasizes that food distribution alone isn’t enough.
“Unless a larger food system is created that’s healthy for the individual, community, and planet, the food security issue will always be there,” he says. “We have systemic issues that need to be handled.”
One of those issues is limited access to steady employment. Eastie Farm’s paid Climate Corps fellowship helps address this by offering hands-on work and leadership opportunities for teens and young adults. That’s how they connected with Jose Manuel, an 18-year-old who arrived from Colombia about a year and a half ago. After completing the fellowship, he now runs one of Eastie Farm’s newest projects: a hydroponic freight farm inside a shipping container capable of growing the equivalent of about 2.5 acres of food.
I visited the Chelsea Terrace site — home to the freight farm and geothermal greenhouse, and about a mile from the Sumner Street location — on a freezing but sunny day in March. As soon as I stepped inside, I started peeling off layers, greeted by a wave of heat and the even warmer welcomes of Jose and food and farming program manager Joel Seidner. We sat on a couch in the corner, sunlight streaming through the glass, the whole space alive with green and humidity.
Beneath us: a 455-foot geothermal well — about as deep as the downtown Custom House Tower is tall. Jose pointed to a graphic on the wall, explaining how the zero-emissions greenhouse works. Dual geothermal units circulate glycol in a closed loop, pulling up stable 55-degree temperatures from the earth to warm the air in winter and cool it in summer. Other features include retractable shade cloths, a vented roof for excess heat, and a rainwater catchment system that stores runoff and filters it back into the ground through permeable pipes.
It’s state-of-the-art. But the idea came from something simple.
Before this site existed, Eastie Farm welcomed students from Boston Public Schools to its original Sumner Street location. The kids loved visiting — planting, watering, weeding, chasing butterflies. But when winter came, the field trips ended.
“We had said, ‘That’s when the ground actually sleeps, and that’s when we want you to be in school,’” Kannan recalls. “Other times, we’re happy to somehow convince your teacher to get you out of the classroom to check out the waterfront or walk in the rain or unblock a storm drain. But wintertime — there’s nothing happening. And they weren’t happy with that. They made that very clear.”
So when Covid hit and the state announced a Food Security Infrastructure Grant, Eastie Farm saw an opportunity to answer the kids’ request.
“That’s what the greenhouse came out of,” Kannan says.
Most greenhouses rely on propane heat, but “because of our climate commitment, we weren’t going to burn propane,” he says. “We actually wanted to have a green greenhouse.”
That led them to geothermal energy, one of the renewable options available in a dense city.
“The sunlight is blocked by billboards right next to the site, and we get what we get,” Kannan says, explaining the limits on using other renewable sources of energy, such as solar. “That site is behind other buildings, and access is difficult … because of all that, we decided to do geothermal.”
Kannan had taken a course through HEET (Home Energy Efficiency Team), and the organization crowdsourced technical expertise. With a lot of determination — and some disassembly of the drilling truck — contractors were able to get their trucks through the narrow alley to install the system.
The greenhouse structure itself was pre-fabricated by Netafim, a European company, and designed by architect Gabe Cira. But the geothermal integration — and the stormwater system — were Eastie Farm’s ideas.
Most greenhouses rely on propane heat, but ‘because of our climate commitment, we weren’t going to burn propane. We actually wanted to have a green greenhouse.'
– Kannan Thiruvengadam, executive director, Eastie Farm
The greenhouse roof is built with three peaks and valleys, which channel rainwater into pipes that drain into a large indoor barrel.
“That serves two purposes,” Kannan says. “One, water is good for the plants. It’s actually better than city water which has been treated with chlorine. And you want water that will not kill microbes when you put it into the soil because you want the soil to be living.”
“And two,” he continues, “the water is stored in a large container on the south side of the greenhouse, which gets plenty of sunlight, and it serves as a heat battery — it stores some warmth. So any excess water we process on site, we don’t send it to the storm drain, which ends up in the harbor. And we don’t want to contribute more to the city’s burden of dealing with stormwater, so we deal with it ourselves.”
Back inside, I ask Jose and Joel to show me what’s growing. There were spider plants and snake plants, strawberries and hibiscus, avocado and plantain trees — even California redwoods.
“One of our staff members was from the redwood area and brought them last year,” Joel says, adding that a lot of what they grow comes from neighbors. “Most of East Boston is of Hispanic origin — Colombian, Salvadoran, Honduran, Guatemalan — and so we try to grow food or plants that are relevant to them or that are reminiscent of home.”
Often, he says, people start these plants in their apartments, and when they outgrow the space, they bring them here. That’s how the avocado and banana trees arrived.
In summer, there’s a wall of cherry tomatoes. There’s basil, ginger, microgreens, and starter seedlings bound for Eastie Farm’s other garden sites. One site, called Our Garden, is owned by Boston Public Schools and maintained by Eastie Farm.
“We’re not able to grow as much as the space allows because we have to keep a flex space to have events, community, office space,” Joel says of the greenhouse.
I point to a string of auburn glass blurbs hanging from the ceiling.
“Our ambient light,” Joel says. “This is not only a growing space, it’s meant to grow community.”
He tells me Eastie Farm strives to be a “third space,” a term from urbanist theory. Home is the first space. Work is the second. A third space is where people can just be — not as consumers or employees, but as neighbors. The lights help create that atmosphere. They were hand-blown by a MassArt professor and resemble garlic bulbs — a symbolic crop for Eastie Farm.
“When East Farm started, it was just a bunch of neighbors who didn’t want a developer building luxury condos on an abandoned lot,” Joel says. “They planted garlic in the fall, and when the city said the license was ending, they’d say, ‘We still have garlic in the ground.’ That happened a couple years. They would extend the license that way, until the city said, ‘You’re doing good work. If you form a nonprofit, you can buy the land.’”
The bulbs now commemorate that garlic crop legacy: Just because the ground is quiet in winter doesn’t mean the work is done.
Today, Eastie Farm hosts community potlucks, seasonal solstice and equinox celebrations, educational programs, open-mic nights, and even educational gatherings for city employees.
“A lot of what we’ve done is possible because of partnerships with the city,” Joel says. “We’re in an environmental justice community, working on climate education and preparedness. It helps when city staff see what goes on.”
Funding for Eastie Farm’s programming comes from several one-off grants from donors, which includes individuals and family foundations. Their capital projects (like the zero-emissions greenhouse) so far have been funded by city and state governments, as well as foundations such as the Boston Foundation and Empower East Boston. Eastie Farm has a number of partners, including Urban Farming Institute, The Food Project, Boston Public Schools, and the City of Boston Environment Department.
The nonprofit has also partnered with a local fish-canning company, Channel Fish. When the company over-harvests, it donates fresh fish — up to 300 pounds in a day — for distribution through Eastie Farm. Those flash distributions happen year-round, but their main distribution runs through the summer through their CSA program. Hundreds of people participate.
Outside, Jose and Joel walk me around to the new freight farm. The retrofitted shipping container came from a company called Freight Farms in South Boston, which modifies the container with the software, lighting, water systems, and everything else. Jose hands me black booties to slide over my shoes before we step inside. Overhead fans whir loudly, keeping conditions just right inside this climate-controlled space. Jose flips a switch to quiet the noise so we can hear each other better.
“You can control humidity, temperature, water, carbon dioxide, you can control how much nutrients plants get, when they get watered, what type of light, when they get light,” Joel tells me. “You have complete control of this environment so you have very reliable crops, and there’s much less pest resistance because it’s usually closed and there isn’t much connection to the outside.”
“That’s why we wear booties,” Jose adds. He points out the nursery area holding seedlings, a tank with 33 gallons of water, and a speaker. “It could be for us, but also for the plants,” he says. “Music vibrations can help the growth of plants. I’ve heard that heavy metal has good vibrations for the plants to grow healthy.”
“There are some freight farmers that play specific music all the time,” Joel says. “It’s more of a marketing scheme to say, this lettuce was from Rihanna. But there have been some studies that say music improves the quality, the health of the plants.”
They point out a pH sensor and a water monitor. Then, in the back, lush, vibrant lettuce unfurls from stacked, slidable walls — about 700 heads per wall — ruby streaked, buttery soft, and densely packed. It’s salanova lettuce, Jose explains, which produces more leaves than your average butterhead or romaine. Most of the harvest is used for Eastie Farm’s CSA program. Much of it is also given away to neighbors. “These are some of the most tender lettuces that I’ve ever eaten,” Joel says, “This is my favorite part of the freight farm. Don’t you just want to take a nap?”
Throughout the visit, Jose and Joel occasionally switch to Spanish. I’m surprised to learn Jose only started learning English about a year ago, right after he arrived in the U.S. He came with his father, a few months after his mother had immigrated alone from Colombia. “Mostly to make a better future here,” he says. “East Boston is great because we can speak Spanish,” he adds. “It made things easier.”
Most of East Boston is of Hispanic origin — Colombian, Salvadoran, Honduran, Guatemalan — and so we try to grow food or plants that are relevant to them or that are reminiscent of home.
– Joel Seidner, food and farming program manager, Eastie Farm
Jose found Eastie Farm while job hunting — he spotted a flyer in a store.
“My mom told me to apply,” he says. “She said, ‘Maybe if you meet these guys, you’ll like it.’ I wasn’t interested in the beginning, but I said okay. I thought maybe I’d make some friends, learn some new things about farming. Now I love it.”
He stood out from a group of about 40 others in last year’s Climate Corps program, and now works for Eastie Farm fulltime. He learned a lot of his English and his farming skills on the job.
“It took a lot of hard work and dedication from him,” Joel says. “It’s been very impressive.”
“My favorite part about working here is that you can dream,” Jose says. “You can have big goals, and those goals are actually possible. A year ago, I was just in the youth program. Now I’m running this space. I feel very blessed.”
Jose’s goals are simple: keep learning. “I want to be more connected to the community. I like to learn for myself, and then when I know what to do, I want to teach other people and other communities that want to do things like farming. I want to improve my English. I want to start to learn a new language … Portuguese.”
Eastie Farm is built on nonstop learning — and the plans just keep growing. A second shipping container (which the greenhouse actually arrived in), is parked next to the other one, and the team plans to turn it into another freight farm to grow mushrooms. “They don’t need light. They don’t need much water. They don’t need nutrients,” Joel says. “They’re like the emos of the culinary world. They just want to sit in the dark.”
The shipping containers technically sit on Boston Public Schools land, and a new school is slated to be built on the adjacent parking lot, which Eastie Farm staff and volunteers have refurbished and cleaned up. “The idea is to have an open, integrated curriculum in that school where kids can learn here in the greenhouse,” Joel says. “We’re in conversations to see if maybe they’ll parcel it off from this wall and give it to Eastie Farm.”
For Kannan, these physical spaces are part of a much bigger picture.
“These practices engage the community in a way that makes it possible to have larger conversations,” he says. “What if the flooding was extreme — what would we do? What if there was food scarcity? How would we connect with each other as people so that we can help each other out? Because if there is a disaster, people will be affected at different levels. Those of us who are not as affected as much can help those who are. That means people connecting and building trust.”
Because when neighbors grow together, so does the strength to weather anything.
To learn more about Eastie Farm and its programs visit eastiefarm.com. Visit the volunteer page to sign up to be a volunteer. There are volunteer events at the 6 Chelsea Terrace greenhouse every Wednesday from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Check out the full calendar of events. Donations can be made here.
5 Things to Know About Eastie Farm
- It’s home to the region’s first zero-emissions greenhouse.
Eastie Farm’s geothermal greenhouse in East Boston stays warm in the winter and cool in the summer using a 455-foot-deep well. No fossil fuels required.
- They grow food and community
From garlic and plantains to lettuce and redwoods, Eastie Farm grows crops that reflect the neighborhood’s immigrant roots — and hosts open mic nights, solstice celebrations, volunteer parties, and community potlucks. Check out the calendar of events here.
- Food access is part of the mission.
The nonprofit distributes CSA shares from 50 regional farms at tiered pricing, and often at no cost. This helps support rural farmers as well as serve a densely-populated community with only one supermarket.
- It’s an education and job training hub, too.
The Climate Corps program trains teens and young adults in farming, sustainability, and leadership — and sometimes launches full-time careers, like Jose Manuel’s, who’s now running the new hydroponic freight farm. Students from Boston Public Schools also frequently visit Eastie Farm for field trips and experiential learning.
- The work doesn’t stop in winter.
With geothermal energy, rainwater catchment, volunteer opportunities, and community events, Eastie Farm’s greenhouse proves that the ground really never sleeps.
